Small businesses can struggle to gather and integrate bigger and better data. In today’s cut-throat market, you need to become more data-driven than ever.

There is a way to leverage predictive analytics for business.

This will allow you to make smarter decisions and strategies for more sustainable business growth. Fortunately, there are countless data analysis services for small businesses to choose from. These analytics tools can help you predict the possible risks and gains for each decision you make.

According to a recent report, the demand for predictive analytics tools will reach $21.5 billion by 2025. This is a huge leap to last year’s demand which was around $7.2 billion. There are various factors that contribute to this increase. For one, more organizations are starting to adopt big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies within their operations. Likewise, there is a growing need to forecast possible future financial scenarios to guide businesses on their recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Predictive analytics for business

With that, here are some ways to leverage predictive analytics for business - for better results.

Reduce operational cost and increase efficiency

If left unresolved, any bottlenecks within your operations can cost you. It can also cause unnecessary delays in your production. Hence, you need to make sure that you resolve such issues before it gets bigger and more harmful to your growing business.

How could data analytic tools help small businesses? By tracking and identifying the various kinks in your operations. Moreover, it can determine potential issues before they can manifest themselves and affect your workflows. This directs your attention to areas that you need to improve on. Likewise, this helps you prepare and safeguard your processes against these possible issues beforehand. As a result, it streamlines your operation, reducing cost and increasing efficiency in the process.

Increase sales

Data analytics tools can also give your deeper insights into your customers’ behaviors. This includes their preferences, demands, and their inclinations. You can use such critical data in many ways. For one, you can use it to improve your lead segmentation and scoring. This will allow you to qualify better leads and guide them easily through your funnel.

Leveraging predictive analysis on your customer behaviors can also improve content personalization. This refers to the ads you show them, the products you recommend, and the emails you send. It allows you to cross-sell, up-sell, and next-sell. Using these FinancesOnline examples of data visualization software, you can better analyze the data you collect and gain detailed insights on your customers in the process.

Boost customer service

Better data management for small businesses can also help boost customer service. You can gain insights into their backgrounds, demographics, demands, and other critical information to foster deeper relationships in the process. This can also help personalize your services to them for better and more effective engagements.

Using data, you can analyze past interactions with them and determine frequent issues raised by your customers. This allows you to predict their demands and needs and adjust your strategies accordingly. For example, you can identify the peak hours when most of your customers tend to call. Likewise, you can also determine the top problems they encounter with your services. This, in turn, allows you to focus on resolving it to reduce complaints and prevent issues from getting out of hand.

Optimize marketing campaigns

Numbers and stats alone can sometimes speak for themselves. It can highlight the best aspects of your business and boost your credibility. However, only a few people can make sense of raw data. Through effective data storytelling, you can be able to communicate more successfully with your customers.

By making your data more visually engaging and interesting, you can optimize your marketing campaigns. It allows you to convey the true meaning behind the figures and provide a relatable narrative to your audience. The combination between data and storytelling can become a powerful tool of persuasion in the hands of an articulate and engaging person. Hence, there is no question that data storytellers will become invaluable for small businesses like yours.

Improve product development

You can also leverage predictive data on your product development process. This allows you to determine which products or services will generate more sales in the future, which ones need to be improved on, and what trends you need to incorporate in your products.

While this is no accurate science, it can still give you a glimpse of the economic climate in store for your products and services. This lets you create informed decisions on what direction you should be taking in terms of launching and marketing your products and services.

Driving for better data

Competition in the market is getting tighter as most companies become more data-driven. Small businesses need to keep up and improve their data literacy if they want to remain relevant and competitive in the market.

So get on with the times and explore what analytics tools you can use to improve your business operations. You can check out software like Graphite to make the most out of your data.